Tag: goats

A Day in the Life

Woke a bit before 6 am this morning. Drank coffee outside on the porch and read an essay in Harper’s by Lydia Davis. She’s an author I’ve encountered many times in journals and magazines, and I’m pretty sure I have a story collection or two of hers somewhere? At any rate she’s writing about observation and the compulsion to write about her observations. She’s got a singular style and voice in her fiction and non-fiction, and does a lot of translation from the French–in fact I’m sure I read an essay by her about French translation at some point. I’m distracted while reading and observing our two cats who are climbing on me one minute, then chasing lizards the next. Lydia Davis is observing cows in her essay, and while I’m reading I hear a horrible guttural stegasaurus groan which I can assume is one of our goats even though it’s a new sound. The male has climbed along a narrow ledge atop a wall which has a metal chain-link fence built into it, at the top of which is a kiwi vine. While standing stretched out full length on his hind hooves to nibble kiwi leaves his hooves slipped off the wall. I rush over to find him being strangled by the kiwi vines with his horns stuck in the fence. I free his horns as he re-positions his hooves on the wall and immediately he is contentedly munching kiwi leaves again as if nothing happened.

At about 8 am guests who’ve rented one of our gite appartements–The Studio–check out. They are two cyclists off to their next destination after a one-night stay in Treignac. I pause my reading to strip down the bed and turnover the apartment for the next guests. Just as I finish hanging the clean sheets and towels from the washer our next guests arrive. They’ve rented The Loft gite for a daytime sleep-over as they are driveing some horrid 24-hour route. They check in at 8:05 and are planning to leave at 5pm. I wonder if they are actually going to sleep or if they are going to fuck. It’s our first overday stay as opposed to overnight stay. And, to complictate things we have a check-in in the same apartment 45 minutes after they are planning to leave. Things will be tight. We are used to it, however, as business has been brisk this year since January.

After checking in the new guests I hear the guttural scream again, and the male goat is once more dangling in the air with his throat tangled in kiwi vines. I free him once more.

I sit again and finish the Lydia Davis piece and then polish off the rest of the magazine. I realize I rarely write about day-to-day stuff anymore the way I used to on a previous and much more successful blog. Has my Muse deserted me? Have I lost interest? On the desk in my office is a pile of language books I put out back in February–I was adamant that I was going to do a daily study/writing routine and that immediately fell apart. Perhaps I’ll get it back together in the fall after tourist season quiets down.

Bou learns a lesson

Bou loves to play with our goats…but she has been for the past six months WAY too aggressive and powerful for them. They would try to play with her but inevitably Bou would crash into them and send them flying because despite being a little dog she is a bundle of muscle coming in at almost 30 lbs. And the goats are only 8 months old now—when Bou first started playing with them they were barely 9 weeks old. Typically Bou plays with dogs who are much larger, like our neighbor’s Lab/Mastiff mix or our friend’s bloodhound. When smaller dogs play with her Bou inevitably hammers them with a powerful shoulder shrug or head butt which sends them trembling and whimpering into their owner’s arms.

But our baby goats are growing and the male Cornichon now weighs only one kilo less Bou. As a result Bou recently learned a valuable lesson

Here is the vid:

Of course seeing this after the fact I’m deeply concerned about Bou’s hips and back—Frenchies have terrible problems and often require surgery. But it’s part of owning a Frenchie: she throws herself around like a lunatic every day, jumping off 6-foot high walls, propelling herself into orbit off the back of sofas and landing awkwardly, doing a vertical leap superior to that of Spud Webb and landing on her spine, chasing a ball and crashing into a hardwood bookcase at full speed. I wish that rather than filming Bou getting blasted into the stratosphere and crashing down I’d captured Corni’s victory dance. It was the most adorable thing to see him hopping back and forth and puffing out his chest at having bested his friend and rival for the first time. Now they play more as equals and it’s very cute.

I love how Bou immediately gets up after her chastening and goes after Corni anew–but as soon as he rears up she backs off. Makes me laugh every time.